‘Women and peace’
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Author | Isobel Renzulli |
| DOI | 10.1177/0924051917737912 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
‘Women and peace’: A human
rights strategy for the women,
peace and security agenda
Isobel Renzulli
School of Law and Criminology, University of Greenwich, Greenwich, UK
Abstract
UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and the successive thematic resolutions together with a
variety of reports have shaped the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. The ensuing policies
and institutional responses try to deal with a variety of issues including women’s participation in
peace-making initiatives and protection from sexual violence during armed conflict and in its
aftermath. As such these responses are underpinned by a reactive approach with a focus on
conflict and post-conflict gender-sensitive areas of intervention. While these remain worthwhile
interventions, the WPS agenda, in spite of its name, inadequately addresses gender-sensitive areas
in peace situations, regardless of the existence of conflicts. Building on feminist critiques of the
WPS agenda and the findings and recommendations of the 2015 UN Global study on the imple-
mentation of Resolution 1325, the article argues that the WSP agenda and its prevention limb need
to elaborate and integrate more explicitly and comprehensively a human rights strategy that shifts
the focus from a reactive to a proactive model, one which pursues gender equality and women’s
human rights in its own right, irrespective of whether conflicts erupt or not. A human rights infused
WPS preventive agenda should be premised, on the one hand, on a clear understanding and
endorsement of the meaning of gender equality, on the other hand, on the creation of mechanisms
and process bolstering the role of international and regional human rights regimes. In particular,
robust regional human rights systems have the potential to create fora for the participation of and
interaction with domestic constituencies in the region. This in turn could lead to the elaboration of
context sensitive, participatory solutions, grounded in international human rights law, to existing
forms of discrimination against women, which during conflicts may be exacerbated, for example, in
the form of sexual enslavement and abductions as reported in recent and less recent conflicts.
Keywords
Women, peace and security, feminist activism, human rights, UN, African Union, Arab League
Corresponding author:
Isobel Renzulli, Lecturer in Law, School of Law and Criminology, University of Greenwich, Greenwich SE109LS, UK.
Email: I.Renzulli@greenwich.ac.uk
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights
2017, Vol. 35(4) 210–229
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0924051917737912
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1. Introduction
It is rather uncontroversial today to argue that conflict related human rights violations committed
against women are the symptom of pre-existing structural gender inequalities. In its 1992 landmark
General Comment No 19, the CEDAW Committee noted that gender based violence is, in its many
expressions, a form of discrimination.
1
In 1985 the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies (1985)
highlighted that ‘peace cannot be realised under conditions of economic and sexual inequality,
denial of basic human rights and fundamental freedoms [ ...]’.
2
The elimination of discrimination
against women, the fulfilment of gender equality and women’s human rights is a worthwhile
struggle in its own right and remains equally compelling in the context of the Women, Peace,
and Security Agenda (WPS agenda). UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (Resolution 1325),
which established the subsequent WPS agenda, was adopted in October 2000 calling for women’s
equal participation with men and their full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and
promotion of peace and security, as well as their protection during conflict. The resolution was the
result of hard and extensive efforts by women’s movements and feminist pacifist activists. While
aware of the consequences of conflicts on women, both during and after, and of the need to address
them in a gender sensitive way, the pacifist feminist agenda was permeated by the idea of peace.
Peace was ‘understood in the positive sense of creating global conditions in which all lives are
valued and are able to be lived in dignity and equality, emphatically rejecting the idea that peace is
merely the absence of war’.
3
Feminist critics of Resolution 1325 have highlighted how the sub-
sequent WPS agenda and policies have somehow diluted the ‘women and peace’ facet of the WPS
agenda.
4
Building on this critique, in Sections 3 and 4, the present article argues that indeed the
WPS agenda has pursued a reactive paradigm, whereby policies and institutional responses have
been geared towards addressing conflict and post-conflict situations, paying little atten tion to
‘women and peace’. While the ‘women and peace’ and ‘women and conflict’ facets of the WPS
might be on a continuum, they require distinct modes of intervention.
The article submits that if the WPS agenda is to address the ‘women and peace’ facet in a more
comprehensive manner, the role of prevention needs to be elaborated and developed. While
Resolution 1325 refers to women’s role in the prevention of conflicts and maintenance of peace,
subsequent policy and institutional responses have paid limited attention and provided an inade-
quate substantive understanding and articulation of the prevention limb. The recent UN Global
Study on Resolution 1325
5
has identified prevention as a key factor in the implementation of the
1. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, ‘General Recommendation 19’ in ‘Note by the
Secretariat, Compilation of General Comments and General Recommendations Adopted by Human Rights Treaty
Bodies’ (29 July 1994) UN Doc HRI/GEN/1/Rev.1.
2. United Nations General Assembly Res 40/108 (13 December 1985) UN Doc A/RES/40/108 13.
3. Dianne Otto, ‘Women, Peace and Security: a Critical Analysis of the Security Council’s Vision’ (2015) University of
Melbourne Legal Studies Research Paper No 705, 4 ¼2631325> Last accessed 4 September
2017; Dianne Otto, ‘The Exile of Inclusion: Reflections on Gender Issues in International Law over the Last Decade’
(2009) 10 Melbourne Journal of International Law 11.
4. ibid; Carol Harrington, ‘Resolution 1325 and Post-Cold War Feminist Politics’ (2011) 13 International Feminist
Journal of Politics 557; Cheryl Hendricks, ‘Women, Peace and Security in Africa. Conceptual and Implementation
Challenges and Shifts’ (2015) 24 African Security Review 364; D Otto, ‘Power and Danger: Feminist Engagement with
International Law through the UN Security Council’ (2010) 32 Australian Feminist Law Journal.
5. To mark the fifteenth anniversary of the adoption of resolution 1325 (2000), the Security Council invited the Secretary-
General to conduct a review with regard to the implementation of resolution 1325. The Secretary-General requested
Renzulli 211
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